


too little, too late

by thanksroach (irnhero)



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Posthumous Love Confessions, Whump, post-mountain angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29808984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnhero/pseuds/thanksroach
Summary: The news reaches Geralt by chance.He’s passing through Hagge to resupply before a long trek south. He hadn’t even intended to stay the night, but storm clouds gathered around midday, and he procured a room with hopes that the worst of it would pass overnight. It’s almost funny. If not for a spontaneous turn of the weather, it may have been months before he heard.or: jaskier dies of hanahaki and geralt is full of regrets
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	too little, too late

**Author's Note:**

> i’m posting polished versions of some of my [febuwhump prompts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29139258/chapters/71536530) on their own so they can have their time to shine; this was for the prompt, "i'm sorry, i didn't know"

The news reaches Geralt by chance. 

He’s passing through Hagge to resupply before a long trek south. He hadn’t even intended to stay the night, but storm clouds gathered around midday, and he procured a room with hopes that the worst of it would pass overnight. It’s almost funny. If not for a spontaneous turn of the weather, it may have been months before he heard.

The rain has started by the time Geralt claims a corner table at the back of the inn’s accompanying tavern. It’s crowded by his standards, but there are still a few empty tables. He’s halfway through his second drink when a bard saunters to the front of the room, drawing every eye with his loud garb and ridiculous feathered cap. 

Geralt downs the rest of his ale in a hurry and rises from his seat. The odds of hearing a song about the White Wolf are slim in the grand scheme, but slim is more than zero, and more than enough to drive him from the room. He drops a few coins on the table and makes for the stairs.

The bard clears his throat. “Greetings travelers and good people of Hagge! I am Tarrant, and my performance this evening shall be an homage to the late bard and poet, Jaskier–a true master of his craft. May his work forever preserve his memory.”

“Get on with it!” someone jeers.

Geralt freezes. His feet, his breath, the beat of his heart, all of it still. _Late… his memory…_ It couldn’t be. There had to be a mistake, some other poet with the same stupid name, it _had_ to be. But then the bard begins to play and there can be no mistaking it. Geralt knows this song, had known it when it was little more than a string of notes hummed to pass the time. 

Someone jostles his shoulder, jolting him back to reality. He catches a few curious pairs of eyes staring and suddenly the room is far too crowded–hot and airless. Geralt abandons his path to the stairs and turns to the exit at a near-jog.

He bursts through the door, startling a pair of incoming patrons, and escapes into the rain. The street is empty so there’s no one to see him lean heavily against the side of the inn and try helplessly to catch his breath.

His own voice echos in his head, cruel and biting, _if life could give me one blessing._

He knows he’ll never get to take it back.

~

It’s raining the day Geralt arrives at the estate. It hadn’t ever really stopped between Hagge and here. It’s fitting, he thinks. Jaskier would have said ‘poetic’.

He’s left in an opulent hallway to wait for the Lord and Lady to receive him and he feels like a fish out water among the finery in his only moderately clean garments. He tries to imagine a young Jaskier, little Lord Julian, walking this very hall with a stiff collar and books on his head to mind his posture. No wonder he left this place. Such a life, for all its luxuries, would have been a prison to him. Like caging a bird. 

Just before Geralt decides that it’s been too long, that clearly Jaskier’s family intends on sending him away, the same servant who led him inside emerges from the chamber he’d entered and ushers Geralt inside.

The room is even more bedecked than the hall and at a masterfully painted table sit three nobles in fine, colorful clothes–a man and two women. The man looks the spit of Jaskier a few decades aged except for his brown eyes and the younger of the two women is much the same with softer features. She must be his sister. Geralt didn’t know he’d had a sister.

Before anyone can breathe a word, the woman who must be Jaskier’s mother speaks with a voice that commands, “What are you doing here?”

She glares at him with Jaskier’s eyes.

“Mother, please–” his sister tries, but she gets no further.

“How dare you show your face here. You did this! You killed my son!” 

“That’s enough, my dear,” says Lord Pankratz firmly. “He came all this way, we will allow the man to pay his respects.”

Jaskier’s mother doesn’t refute her husband’s decision aloud, but the way she rises from the table, chair screeching against the floor conveys her displeasure. She leaves the room without another word, pausing only to spit at Geralt’s feet.

The sister is the one to break the long silence that follows. “Apologies for my mother,” she says and the sympathy in her eyes is genuine.

Geralt clears the lump from his throat before he replies. “None necessary. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“You are welcome here for the night,” says Lord Pankratz, “but I think it best that you move on in the morning. My wife’s feelings are shared by many, due to the nature of our son’s death.”

“Sir?” For all Geralt’s attempts to find out, no one had been able to tell him what happened.

Lord Pankratz opens his mouth to answer, but the words don’t come. Geralt prepares himself for all manner of tragedies. It must have been truly gruesome if he can’t even speak of it. The pair of nobles share a knowing look before the sister speaks.

“My brother was afflicted by the curse of flowers. Hanahaki, I believe academics call it.” 

Geralt’s heart drops to his stomach and his stomach to the floor. The curse of flowers was a dreadful way to die, slow and painful. He wonders how he could have missed it for all the years it must have ailed Jaskier before it got this far. And why didn’t he _tell_ him, he could have found him a healer, could have bought him more time, he could have–

His mother. She watched her son choke on bloody petals, watched him drown in unrequited love and she blamed Geralt. ‘You killed my son’, she’d said. He feels the blood drain from his face and a sudden chill envelope him. _No. Please, please, no_.

“You’ll want to leave your things before you pay your respects,” says Lord Pankratz, ringing a little bell. “Bernard will see you to a chamber.”

All the way to his room, Geralt can only think about how Jaskier must have inherited all the kindness in his heart from his father. A man so generous, he can offer hospitality to his only son’s murderer. 

~

The clouds are still dark and heavy when Geralt leaves for the graveyard, but the rain has stopped. Bernard is kind enough to lead him to the wood behind the estate and show him the path to the family resting place. The path is laid with stone and well-kept, winding through the wood without a single weed encroaching upon it. 

At its end, he finds a small graveyard surrounded by trees and decorated with a dozen or so headstones. But he’s not alone here. By the grave nearest to the path, the one whose dirt is still raised in a mound, stands a woman in a fine dress already staring at him. Jaskier’s mother.

“My lady,” he says with a bow. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“I was just leaving.” She wraps her shawl tighter around herself, but she doesn’t go. “Do you know why I blame you for my son’s death?” she asks instead.

Geralt clenches his jaw and avoids her gaze. He can’t offer her the answer she deserves because saying it would make it true and it _can’t_ be true. Some small, foolish part of him hopes beyond hope that he’s gravely misunderstood and that someone is going to burst in and explain the whole mess away.

She offers him no such respite. “We begged him to send for you,” she says and Geralt holds his breath against the tightening in his chest. “Surely some chance was better than none, we thought. My husband sent riders after you, but you’re a hard man to find. He wouldn’t tell us how to find you. He was so certain it would only sour what time he had left.”

She’s silent for a few moments. Then, “Could you have saved him?”

Geralt looks up at her properly, but any words he may have mustered are lost when he sees her eyes. _His_ eyes _._ The same shape and indescribably blue, but so much colder than he could ever have been.

“Grief has made me cruel,” she says when Geralt doesn’t reply. “It would bring me some comfort to know that you will suffer the way he suffered. Suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

She turns away and Geralt waits until she disappeared down the path before he lets himself exhale. His breath begins to catch in his chest and he kneels beside the stone. There are flowers carved into it. Buttercups.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, I–” His words are worth nothing now, but he stutters through them anyway. Jaskier deserves to know, wherever he is. “I could– I could’ve loved you back.”

Whatever control Geralt had wielded over the past weeks dissolves into nothing. He feels his face twist and his vision blurs. For the first time after Hagge, the first time in a long time, he cries.

**Author's Note:**

> visit me on [tumblr](https://d-andilion.tumblr.com/)


End file.
